“The view from the Belmont Drive Missionary Baptist Church is beautiful, but many say the messages outside the church are downright ugly.

The reader board now displays two messages. The first reads, “Wake up Christians. Allah is not our God. Muhammad not greater than Jesus.” The second says, “Only the Bible is God’s word. ‘Holy book.’ Koran is just another book.”

“I literally had to stop and back up and make sure I saw what I saw, and I was profoundly offended and upset by it,” Eric Cohn said.

Cohn, a Hood River resident, first spotted the message while he was out for a bike ride. He couldn’t believe what he was reading, and he isn’t the only one.

“I was really annoyed and sad,” Hood River mayor, Paul Blackburn, said. “I’m annoyed that in this political season there’s a solid case of ugly going on. I think it norms up this kind of behavior like ‘oh it’s okay to be a bigot now.’”

Kudos to this man for standing up for God in the face of criticism. He is a true hero.